TOM PHILPOTT: Key senator seeks more pay, benefits in 2002

U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., has assumed chairmanship of the Armed Services personnel subcom-mittee with some specific goals and fresh ideas to make defense budget 2002 another good one for military pay and benefits.

* Enticing members in critical job skills to extend their careers in return for thousands of dollars in U.S. Savings Bonds, which could then be used, tax free, to cover family education expenses.

* Rescinding a century-old law that bars "concurrent receipt" of both earned military retired pay and tax-free VA disability compensation for service-related disabilities.

Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y, as the new personnel subcommit-tee chairman for the House Armed Services Committee, also sees reason to target next January's pay raise, but he also wants agreement from the Bush administration that it would be an efficient use of tight defense dollars.

"I'd like to do it collectively," he said. "We don't pass anything (into law) without the Senate and the president's agreement."

Both Hutchinson and McHugh said military pay still lags pri-vate sector wages by 10 percent to 12 percent and the gap's size likely varies by rank.

A draft report this winter from the Ninth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, a Pentagon study group, supports targeting. It notes that mid- and senior-grade enlisted are more underpaid than are other service members when pay comparisons with the private sector focus both on experience and education.

Past pay comparisons assumed that the entire enlisted force had only a high-school education. In fact, most career enlisted today have some college credits and many have degrees.

When pay comparisons note educational attainment, the pay gap for enlisted careerists widens with the private sector and might explain recent difficulties for some services in reaching career retention goals, Pentagon sources said.

"We want to target pay raises toward senior enlisted members where the gap is the greatest and the compensation has not been commensurate with the responsibilities they have," Hutchinson said.

Not all the services favor tar-geting. Some officials argue there hasn't been enough time in this compressed budget cycle to debate pros and cons. Some say the dollars involved aren't enough to boost retention significantly.

Some worry about the impact on morale if, rather than the mil-itary getting a 6.8 percent across-the-board increase, senior en-listed get, say, 10 percent and all other members only 4.6 percent. Hutchinson and McHugh both plan to wait to see what Bush proposes when 2002 budget details are announced in April.

Hutchinson isn't waiting to launch his new family education savings bond.

"Retention efforts have to be targeted not just at service mem-bers but their families," he said.

Many careerists tell him, he said, they want help with educa-tion costs for spouses and children.

"I supported Sen. (Max) Cleland's (D-Ga.) efforts to make the Montgomery GI Bill benefits portable. That's still a noble goal. But I think there are other ap-proaches we can take that may allow us to provide a solution more easily."

Cleland sought authority for members to transfer unused MGIB benefits to spouses and children. It's costly. Hutchinson said it also raises tax issues that the Senate Finance Committee is reluctant to resolve through U.S. tax code changes.

Instead, Hutchinson wants to offer officers and enlisted in crit-ical specialties thousands of dollars worth of U.S. Savings Bonds if they extend their service obligations by six years. The savings bonds, under cur-rent tax law, could be accepted and redeemed at maturity tax- free - if the money is used on education of the member, spouse or children.

Under the plan, persons in critical skills with less than three years of service would be offered bonds with a face value - that is, worth at maturity - of $5,000.

Members with three to nine years would be offered bonds with face values of $15,000. Those with more than nine years could get up to $30,000 in face value. Savings bonds are bought at prices equal to half the face value. That means the immediate worth of a $5,000 bond is only $2,500.

Hutchinson said he also wants to end the dollar-for-dollar reduc-tion in retired pay that occurs when full-term military retirees begin to draw VA compensation for service-related disabilities. He promised a hearing on the concurrent receipt ban.

Removing that ban is long overdue, he said, but the fight, as always, will revolve around dollars.

"The president has clearly put a line in the sand on the amount he wants to initially commit" to defense, Hutchinson said. "But this is something we believe in. We think it's a matter of equity, and we're going to push it."

On this and other issues deserving of reform, McHugh said, "meritorious needs far outweigh the likely resources."

But both panel chairmen said they are confident the legislative year will be another good one for military personnel. This despite President Bush's surprise an-nouncement in February that he will stick, for now, with the de-fense budget ceiling of $310 billion set by the Clinton administration.

Whether the top line rises above that figure later in the year will be determined in part by a Pentagon top-to-bottom re-view of strategy and programs. Hutchinson said Republican lawmakers already are con-vinced more defense spending is justified.

Working out funding details for the Tricare for Life program and Tricare Senior Pharmacy benefits will be another priority, Hutchinson said. McHugh's subcommittee already has a Tricare hearing set for March 14.

More Reading...

All enlisted members would see their basic pay rise by at least 6 percent next January. All officers would get at least a 5 percent raise. But tens of thousands of enlisted and officers are in line for even bigger raises under a "targeted" military ... [Read More...]

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs popped into an impromptu Pentagon press briefing Nov. 4, where a defense think-tank study was being discussed, to challenge the study's finding that there is no "pay gap" between the military and the private sector. "There is a ... [Read More...]

The House Armed Services Committee has approved a defense bill for 2003 that sustains three productive trends for military people and their pay. One trend by Congress is to increase basic pay and housing allowances at a pace that exceeds growth in private-sector wages ... [Read More...]

greet 12.6% military 'pay gap' ilitary people say they're underpaid. Service leaders have data to prove it. Sympathetic lawmakers stand ready to help. For all of that, the Clinton administration and Congress don't put much stock in claims of a 12.6 percent "gap" between military ... [Read More...]

Congress and military leaders point with pride to recent legislation that enhanced military retirement benefits for much of the current career force, set across-the-board pay raises above private sector wage growth and established Tricare-for-Life coverage for Medicare-eligible beneficiaries. Those initiatives, however, helped to ... [Read More...]